18
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 27, 2015
BLOCK THAT METAPHOR!
THE RIGHT POEM
When Greeks want to gesture "No,"
they nod: a little upward snap of
the head. The confusion that this can
produce in visitors has long been an ob-
ject of amusement for the locals---and
the source of rueful anecdotes by tour-
ists who have found themselves inad-
vertently refusing bellhops or a sweat-
ing glass of frappé after a hot afternoon
on the Acropolis. Lately, you'd be for-
given for thinking that the Greeks them-
selves have been having a hard time un-
derstanding the di erence between "yes"
and "no." On July 5th, at the ostensible
encouragement of the Prime Minister,
Alexis Tsipras, an overwhelming ma-
jority voted no to punishing new aus-
terity measures in return for continued
membership in the euro zone---"a bed
of Procrustes," as The American Interest
described the dilemma. A week later,
however---after an escalating struggle
between Tsipras's government and Eu-
ropean creditors that the Telegraph com-
pared to "a tragedy from Euripides"---
the same electorate was being called
upon by Tsipras to say yes to a bailout
o er more "draconian" (CNBC) than
the last one.
"Draconian," "procrustean," "Eurip-
ides": however confusing the state of
a airs in Athens and Brussels right now,
it's clear that the temptation to invoke
the glories of ancient Greece in con-
nection with the current Greek eco-
nomic crisis is one that journalists have
found impossible to resist. Most of the
allusions are unlikely to send readers
racing to Wikipedia. " 'GREXIT' BRINK
MANSHIP IS CLASSIC GREEK TRAGEDY, "
went one headline, on Breitbart.com.
(The article contained a link to the Web
page for a Greek-tragedy course at Utah
State University.) Some betray a senti-
mental high-mindedness about Greece's
position in the history of civilization:
"IN GREECE, A VOTE BEFITTING THE
BIRTHPLACE OF DEMOCRACY?" Reu-
ters mused.
Of the more substantive attempts to
link Greece's grandiose past to its hum-
bled present, nearly all have focussed
on a notorious incident from the Pelo-
ponnesian War---the ruinous, three-
decade-long conflict between Athens
and Sparta. In 416 B.C., the Athenians
brutally punished the tiny island state
of Melos for trying to preserve its neu-
trality. In a famous passage of Thucy-
dides' history of the war, known as the
Melian Dialogue, the Athenian repre-
sentatives blithely tell their Melian
counterparts, "The strong do what they
can and the weak su er what they must,"
before killing all the adult males of the
city and enslaving the women and chil-
dren. Perceived similarities between the
Athenians of the fifth century B.C. and
today's Germans have provoked a flurry
of think pieces. "What Would Thucy-
dides Say About the Crisis in Greece?"
an Op-Ed in the Times asked.
Yet, despite the baggy analogizing
and the rhetoric about eternal verities,
attempts to use Pericles' Athens to ex-
plain Tsipras's Greece often obscure
important di erences. "Melos was a
neutral state," the Times Op-Ed tartly
observed, "while modern Greece not
only joined the European Union but
over the years merrily plundered its
treasury."
It's easy to see where the impulse to
conflate "Greek history" with "Classi-
cal Greek history" comes from: appeals
to Thucydides or Plato can confer au-
thority in real-world decision-making.
(In 2001, some conservatives cited the
Athenians' take-no-prisoners rhetoric
at Melos to justify the invasion of Af-
ghanistan.) But the presumption that
illusory choice, the President argued last week, because, "with-
out a deal, the international sanctions regime will unravel."
If he is right about that, the accord is more attractive still.
The coalition that negotiated the deal now on the table---the
United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany, and
the European Union---represents an extraordinary front of
unity against nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. Hold-
ing that rare alliance together will make it easier to challenge
Iran later if the ayatollahs do cheat or go for a bomb after
the termination of the agreement.
The most persuasive argument against the deal is that
relieving economic sanctions would replenish Iran's treasury
without any requirement that it stop sponsoring terrorism,
as the State Department reports that it continues to do. Shi-
ite Iran and insecure Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia are
locked in intensifying sectarian conflicts from Yemen and
Iraq to Syria. Iran arms Hezbollah and Hamas in their dead-
end mini-wars of rocket terror against Israel. An expansion-
ist Iran with new resources and legitimacy might make the
Middle East's present deterioration even worse. Obama has
not always acknowledged this risk, but, in an interview with
Thomas Friedman in the Times last week, he said, "People's
concerns here are legitimate. Hezbollah has tens of thousands
of missiles that are pointed toward Israel." Smaller Sunni
states, too, he said, have "legitimate concerns" about Iran's
"dangerous" behavior, and he added that he would further
strengthen the defenses of Israel and support Sunni allies.
But nuclear-arms control in the Middle East is insepara-
ble from the region's su ering and its conventional conflicts.
This has been the case since the beginning of Iran's program;
the revolutionary regime first turned to A. Q. Khan's sales-
men in the wake of Saddam Hussein's grotesque use of chem-
ical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. In Syria, aid workers
have reported that the Bashar al-Assad regime, an Iranian
ally, has again used crude chlorine-gas bombs against civil-
ians and insurgents. In Yemen, Saudi bombers are killing
and maiming innocents indiscriminately. In Iraq and Syria,
ISIS has enslaved women from religious minorities. No
nuclear-control contract crafted in European luxury hotels is
likely to survive for a decade amid spreading sectarian vio-
lence of that character.
The Obama Administration has yet to address the mass
su ering in the region with anything like the energy and the
risk-taking that it displayed in its breakthrough diplomacy
with Iran. The deal is imperfect but good enough, and it
o ers a tentative promise of a less dangerous Middle East.
It cannot by itself deliver that.
---Steve Coll